Sunday, November 29, 2015

One of more commonly reoccurring questions I am called upon to answer is "Which is the best genealogy program?" In reality, this question is the functional equivalent of asking which is the best car or computer or washer or whatever on the market. There is no "best." The best is what you personally prefer. Notwithstanding this fact, there are hundreds of places where you can go to get lists of the top 10, 20, 40 or whatever. For example, there is a website called "TopTenReviews.com" If you read the "reviews" of the company, you will find a plethora of criticism of their methods and opinions. See, for example, "Top Ten Genealogy Software Reviews for 2013" by Randy Seaver on his Genea-Musings blog.

It may be somewhat painful, but you have to analyze your own shopping habits and attitudes before you decide how much effort and time you might want to spend in determining what items you buy and what you do not buy. You could spend your whole life comparing brands and looking at reviews for everything from food items to a new house.

As a matter of fact, The TopTenReviews folks just came out with their list of the "2015 Best Genealogy Software Reviews and Comparisons." I thought is might be interesting to compare their recommendations to the current lineup on GenSoftReviews.com, a user initiated review forum. As I have stated at various times on this blog, I do not do software reviews. I keep my opinions to myself. I have found that no matter what I say, someone disagrees. In fact, I currently have seven different programs on my computers.

Here is the line up of the TopeTenReviews with a note about each of the program's comparison with GenSoftReviws of the same product. I will also throw in a few of my own observations. TopTenReviews claims to evaluate the programs based on an overall rating, web capabilities, creating connections, charting capabilities and citation and organization. The website has advertisements and special offers on the some of the products. You should also note that there is a separate Apple Macintosh genealogy software review.

No. 1Family Tree Maker 2014$39.99 from Ancestry.comThis is the TopTenReviews Gold Award winning program. My comment is that there is also a Mac version of this program available called "Family Tree Maker 3" but it is not mentioned in the review. You can see the product website at FamilyTreeMaker.com.

What do the folks at GenSoftReviews.com have to say about Family Tree Maker 2014? Click here for the current reviews. The current version of Family Tree Maker is rated 1.57 stars out of 5.0 with 410 reviews. The reviews in 2015 rate the program 1.69 stars out of 5.0. Most of the reviewers give this product only one star.

No. 2Legacy Family Tree 8$29.95 from Milennia SoftwareSecond place from TopTenReviews goes to Legacy Family Tree 8. The statement made by the TopTenReviews folks is that "The best genealogy software provides tools for research, charting and organizing your family tree." In that one statement there are two links to advertisements for other products which I have removed.

GenSoftReviews.com is not quite so enthusiastic about Legacy Family Tree 8. There have been 127 reviews and the combined rating is 2.9 stars out of 5.0. The reviews in 2015 rate the program even lower with 2.2 stars out of 5.0. Why is there such a disparity between the commercial evaluations of the program and that of the users? This is the question you have to answer for yourself.

No. 3Family Historian 6$49.95 from Calico PieThis is a UK based company and the product is popular in the UK. TopTenReviews rates it high because of "ease of use and accuracy scores." I find that the program is lesser known in the United States.

On GenSoftReviews.com, the program has only garnered 38 reviews, but they are more favorable than the preceding two programs. The overall rating is 4.76 out of 5.0 stars and the rating for 2015 is 5.0. Those few folks who reviewed this program seem to love it.

No. 4RootsMagic 7$29.95 from RootsMagic, Inc.TopTenReviews.com gives this program a high rating because it stores and organizes large volumes of data. In looking at the review, I found it to be inaccurate in its characterization of the RootsMagic Record Hints feature that contrary to what is implied links to FamilySearch.org's Family Tree and MyHeritage.com's family tree.

RootsMagic does much better on GenSoftReviews.com than it does on TopTenReviews.com. Its overall rating is 4.34 out of 5.0 stars with 93 reviews. For 2015, it has 4.79 and seems to be gaining in its ratings. At the very least this disparity should be raising some questions about the ratings. From my standpoint, I would rather read a user review that look at a rating.

No. 5Ancestral Quest$29.95 from Incline softwareThe strong point of Ancestral Quest from the TopTenReviews.com folks is that the program has "several tools for calculating relationships and searching for individuals in a huge database. From the historical standpoint, Ancestral Quest is the successor to the old Personal Ancestral File program.

Ancestral Quest fairs very well on GenSoftReviews.com. It has an overall rating of 4.63 out of 5.0 stars and a 2015 rating of 5.0 stars. You can't get much better than that. But the total number of reviews is low at 24. That seems surprising to me, but I think the overall number of reviews probably roughly corresponds to the customer base.

No. 6Heredis 2014$39.99 from Heredis.comThe TopTenReviews seems a little inconsistent when it gets to the review for Heredis. The review mentions the fact that the desktop product combines with their online database, Heredis Online. However, the reviews do not point out that Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic and Ancestral Quest have the same type of feature. Family Tree Maker synchronizes with an online Ancestry.com family tree and both RootsMagic and Ancestral Quest synchronize with FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The review does point out that Heredis is available on multiple devices, Apple, Windows, iOS and Android.

GenSoftReviews.com has only 19 overall reviews for Heredis and the overall results give Heredis 4.1 stars out of 5.0 overall and a solid 4.0 out of 5.0 for 2015 but that is based on only 4 reviews.

No. 7Family Tree Heritage Platinum$24.99 from Individual Software, Inc.I must be quite frank, I was only vaguely aware of this software program at the time I wrote this post. The big feature from the standpoint of the TopTenSoftware reviews is the global search an replace feature. They fail to mention that most (if not all) of the programs the have rated higher all seem to have some variation of this feature.

Family Tree Heritage only has 3 reviews on GenSoftReviews.com and its overall rating is 2.81 and there is no previous history of ratings. This is evidently a new program so it is hard to tell how the ratings would go in the future.

No. 8Brother's Keeper$45.00 from John SteedBrother's Keeper is an older program and TopTenReviews notes that this program "hasn't changed much since the days of DOS but that the program has had a fiercely loyal user base since the 1990s.I am not sure that a loyal customer base is a reason for rating a program in the top ten, but that is what they have to say.

Despite the review by the TopTenReviews, GenSoftReviews.com users give the program an overall rating of 4.68 stars out of 5.0 from 81 reviews. The reviews in 2015 rate the program at 5.0. Read the reviews on GenSoftReviews.com and you will soon see why this program is so highly rated.

No. 9GenBox Family History 3$29.95 from Thoughtful CreationsI am going to have to admit, this is one program I do not remember ever hearing about. TopTenReviews.com rated this program so high based on the ease of use category, but it sounds like they had to dig for features to mention. Here is a link to their website, you might find it a little hard to find. GenBox Family History Version 3.7.1.

The GenBox Family History program has an overall rating of 3.01 stars out of 5.0 from GenSoftReviews.com and a 2015 rating of 1.0. There are a total of 21 reviews and only 1 review in 2015.

No. 10WinFamily 10$87.00 from Evoo Systems, Inc.I am starting to be embarrassed, this is another program I have never heard of. Their website is Winfamily.com. Maybe this is another reason to avoid doing software reviews.

Well, maybe the reason why I have never heard of this program is that I have never heard of this program. There is only 1 review on GenSoftReviews.com and that was back in 2011. Not one since then and that review did not rate the program.

I have no clue what all this shows, but it seems to me that it must mean something. Here are the top 10 genealogical database programs by rating from GenSoftReviews.com. You might think that these programs, because they have a user base and because that user base has submitted reviews would be a better list to choose from than the seemingly arbitrary list from the other company. I have included only supported programs but there are higher rated unsupported programs. Bear in mind that some of the ratings are based on a very few reviews.

My Family Tree by Chronoplex SoftwareBranches by Sherwood Electronics Laboratories, Inc.Ezitree by Rex ToomeySimple Family Tree by Jerry C. DeKeyserFull Family Tree by Charles HerrickLifelines by Marc NozellProgeny Link by ProgenyLink.comAhnenblatt by Dirk BottcherUltimate Family Tree by Palladium Interactive, Inc.Family Historian by Calico Pie

This is another interesting list since I have never seen or even talked to anyone who uses even one of the programs on this list. Popularity and high ratings are not based on sales. Here are some of the programs with the highest number of reviews, which I think is more of an indication of the popularity of the programs.